Before each brass pair lay a dwarf’s body, facedown in a puddle of blood. Each was dressed in a tunic of a solid color from head to toe, with matching velvet nightcaps, their tiny feet perfectly fitted into the sculpted shoes.

From the pallor of their hands and the stiffness of their legs, it was clear at once they were all dead.

“No . . . not . . . not possible—” Uma gasped, stumbling back.

“You said they were g-g-gone from here!” Agatha stuttered, recoiling against the hedge.

“For decades!” Uma choked out. “Someone must have—someone must have brought them back—”

“What monster would bring dwarves back just to kill them?” said Agatha.

Uma looked at her, blank.

“Well, whoever did it is gone,” rasped Tedros, scanning the Woods around them. He bucked up, struggling to act the prince. “I’ll, um, check if any of them are still alive.”

Uma rushed after him. “If so, we must bring them back to the League!”

Agatha stayed behind, gaping at the bodies and bright red puddles. Death everywhere: dwarves . . . Crypt Keeper . . . her mother . . . She spun away, bursting into chills, trying not to connect them. Heaving tight breaths, she focused on the grass under her feet, on her chapped, tingling fingers, until her mind slowed enough for her to think. Who would take all the trouble to bring seven dwarves from different places back to their old home? Who would kill them in cold blood and organize their bodies so precisely? Agatha shook her head, thinking of that horrible scream for help. Who could be so grotesque . . . so Evil—

Agatha’s heart stopped.

That scream.

High-pitched. Female.

It hadn’t been a dwarf’s.

Slowly Agatha lifted her eyes to Snow White’s cottage, like a moth finding a flame.

Neither her prince nor her teacher noticed her move from the hedges, nor the door creaking in the wind, as they went on from dwarf to dwarf, listening to each small heart.

By the time Tedros heard the silence of the last, Agatha was already inside.

9

The Worst Evers Ever

The first thing Agatha noticed about Snow White’s house is that it smelled like Sophie. Standing in the shadowed doorway, she closed her eyes and inhaled the scent . . . lavender cotton candy . . . vanilla-coated fog . . .

The pink front door shivered and groaned behind her. She’d left it open and she could hear Tedros and Uma in the garden, debating what to do with the bodies. She didn’t know why she hadn’t made Tedros check the house with her; perhaps after their argument in the Woods, she wanted to do something without him . . . or perhaps she wanted to test if he’d even notice her gone . . . or perhaps she’d spent so much of the journey acting touchy and weak that she wanted to make up for it. . . . Whatever the reason, here she was, all alone, looking for whoever made that scream.